


I'm The Bad Guy (Duh)

by blackorchids



Category: Emperor's New Groove (2000)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28027917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: There's a few steps Kronk had to take before he got the illustrious job of Yzma's evil henchman.
Relationships: Kronk & Yzma
Comments: 35
Kudos: 66
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	I'm The Bad Guy (Duh)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plumeria47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumeria47/gifts).



> I am literally so sorry about this omg
> 
>  _very_ apt title from the Billie Eilish song, because how could I resist

Kronk grows up at his mother’s side, learning the family recipes with an interest that none of his brothers share. He’s the smallest of the four of them, Lugg and Durk both half a head taller than him and Gub, the youngest of them all, as wide as an oxen and twice as strong.

Papi doesn’t love that Kronk’s one true passion is the culinary arts, and Kronk isn’t quite sold on marriage and all of the traditional duties that come with being the man of the house, so Kronk goes to university. 

His brothers give him a lot of trouble about being the smartest one in the family, and his mama helps him pack his travel sack and reminds him to behave himself. It takes some doing, but eventually Kronk decides to major in villainology, with a strong focus on henchmanning and the administrative arts.

He enjoys it a lot, even if evil and wrong-doing doesn’t come naturally to him, and he loves (hates? Being bad is so _confusing_ ) listening to his more ambitious classmates describe future plans of world domination. His professors teach him the inherent value in humiliation and torture, which he’s sure is exclusive only to his specific major, but despite this, he tries his best in all of his classes.

Kronk is okay at pickpocketing, excellent at looming, and not very good at all when it comes to the kidnapping and threatening, but he _does_ graduate, even if it’s basically at the bottom of the class.

Bottom of the class is still in the class, as his mama says, pulling him to bend nearly in half so she can kiss his forehead on the day he leaves home, ready to find a villain and become their henchman.

Learning from a Big Bad is very exciting, but most of Kronk’s more competent classmates have managed to secure internships with the best villains in all the land, some of them traveling quite far for the opportunity to perform evil at the foot of evil witches and dark knights from the legends.

He spends a lot of time practicing his wicked potion brewing, reading up on magic curses, and practicing his most fearsome scowls in any reflective surface he can find. He sends trinkets home for his brothers, money for his papi, and recipes and pressed flowers for his mama, and purchases a scroll that he can journal all of his feelings into, keeping it in his bag.

Kronk visits many seedy bars, hangs out in dozens of darkened alleys, meets _many_ figures with hoods pulled over their heads far enough that he cannot begin to guess who he’s speaking to.

His first year out of university, he does a lot of one-time contract work, helping people intimidate their nemeses and being the muscle in a lot of schemes, and it’s decent money, but it’s not what he wants. If he can’t be a world-class chef, he _at least_ hopes to find a steady job as someone’s evil sidekick. Knowing where he’s going and what he’s doing everyday is basically the dream. 

(Nightmare?)

Some of the bad guys he encounters are horribly impatient and rude, and a lot of his tasks are quite boring, especially since he turns down as many mean tasks as he can, Angel Kronk cheering him on even as Devil Kronk rolls their eyes.

One night, as a particularly ugly storm brews, the wind shaking trees and screaming through the air, Kronk meets Yzma. She is fabulously hideous, and gloriously impatient, and Kronk is very grateful he has recently updated his Resume of Corrupt and Heinous Acts, because she is one of the most impressive local evil hags.

Kronk hopes that the weather is a good (bad) omen, and that Yzma will hire him to be her brainless underling.

It’s clear, though, that Yzma is not quite impressed with Kronk, her spidery eyelashes fluttering with boredom as he describes his merits and skills, but her success rate (minimal) does not lend her the opportunity to get one of the better henchmen—the ones who graduated with honors in evil scheming and letters of recommendations from their Dean of Doom. Kronk compliments her and very carefully does not wonder what happened to her previous sidekick, and finally, after he grovels a little, Yzma sweeps her violet cape over one boney shoulder and offers him the job.

“You will be my lackey,” Yzma tells him, voice imperious and as grand as it has been the entire time they have been talking. “I will require your complete, unquestioning obedience, as well as your abandonment of any and all frivolous morals you might have.”

Kronk agrees, swallowing tight when her ghoulish, clammy fingers grasp his in their handshake of agreement. Yzma decides that his first task is to clean up the lair, which is horrifyingly filthy and cluttered. She gestures vaguely at the lever he’s meant to be pulling, but Kronk is so excited about the entry rollercoaster that he doesn’t even try to remember it.

And then she disappears into her bedroom, carrying a very large carafe of violently green beetle-wine as she goes. Kronk gets started, sorting and organizing and hauling as many useless pieces of furniture down to the shanty town. He fills endless crates with garbage, and comes up with a treaty that both he and the rats can agree to, in terms of living arrangements. 

Eventually Yzma’s haphazard warbling fades into a thunderous snore, and Kronk moves to quieter tasks like sweeping and sorting through the very dusty stack of evil tomes, putting up beautiful, ruffle-laden drapes in all of the doorways for a little privacy and adorable doilies and placemats under all of the jars of evil goops and suspicious salves.

Kronk condenses all half-opened sachets of pickled toad legs into one corked jug, investigates which poisons have gone off, and waters all of the plants.

After all of this, Yzma is still snoring away, and Kronk has uncovered a perfectly functional, if barren, kitchen, so he runs to the market and fetches all of the ingredients for brussell sprout casserole and kale-sesame salad.

The lair is clean and quiet, a few new inconvenience potions bubbling away right next to his casserole, and Kronk smiles, pleased. He decides to write a letter, to tell his mama about his newfound good fortune.

**Author's Note:**

> i have decided to grace all of you with my (dead) [tumblr](https://rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
